Sunday, June 22, 2014

The South Will Never Rise Again

Flashback all the way to the hallowed
early 2000's. I still had a stomach for constructs like internet
message boards, with one of the best being the one at Patty Mahlon's
loving and meticulously constructed William Girdler website. It was
on that very board where I first read about a Long Island erotic
atrocity known as “Lulu & Friends” aka “Valley Stream
Slut.” This film was helmed by a true Renaissance man, Keith
Crocker. Keith, in addition to being the man responsible for the
fabulous “The Exploitation Journal,” an early and seminal
horror/cult zine, he also has directed some of the most unique and
balls out features like “The Bloody Ape” and “Blitzkrieg:Escape from Stalag 69.”

DVD Cover art of Crocker's "The Bloody Ape"

Getting to know Keith via this message
board, I was always impressed with his storytelling abilities,
especially when related to his experiences as an independent
filmmaker. The stories were often unflinching about the non-glamorous
aspects of the business but always were tinged with a wink and a nod
kind of humor. In short, they were a fun and terrific read. Out of
all the great stories Keith wrote about on that long
dead-in-the-ground forum, the tale of his one and only foray into the
seemingly seamy world of X-rated film making was as harrowing as it
was hilarious. Little did I know that years from then, that I would
be watching this infamous film in the comfort of my own living room.

Lulu meets one of her "friends."

Not too long after reading about
Keith's tales of “Lulu” and her randy friends, I had also read a
review of an equally sexually inept adult film on the Girdler-Board
sister-site-of-sorts, the now long defunct Brains on Film. That
website's main man, Larry Joe Treadway aka Professor Tread, was one
of the funniest and most unique film writers on the internet at that
time. Out of the sizable body of review work he built up, it was his
write-up of one of the most striking, brain-scratching and
life-affirming-in-every-wrong-way-possible films, courtesy of the
impressive film library at Something Weird Video. A film that, once
seen, will stay with you like a drunken hug from your Southern uncle.
That is, if your Southern uncle also happens to be wearing a beat up
and stained Halloween superhero costume.

Something Weird Video's DVD release of "Bat Pussy."

The film in question was 1973's “Bat Pussy.” A film so obscure that the odds of its cast and crew ever
surfacing are about as good as finding a photo of Frank Sinatra
testifying against the Mafia. Dialogue rich with white trash
psychodrama bordering on burma shave with the biggest “star”
being an issue of Screw magazine, “Bat Pussy” is a film whose
description will never do justice to what your eyes and ears will see
and hear. I will, of course, though, give it my best shot. (It is a
real shame that Tread's review of it is MIA since it has remained one
of my favorite pieces of film writing ever, with him describing the
movie as “John Waters' Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf. That might
be the most accurate statement ever written about “Bat Pussy.”)

Best SCREW Magazine plug ever!

You may be wondering what do these two
films have in common, other than being two extremely low-budget,
ultra-obscure adult films? Not much other than a sense of human
sexuality going directly past eroticism and into a transcendent
netherworld that will leave you mystified, giggling and wondering why
your sex drive just took a left turn to Albuquerque and is never
coming back!

With “Lulu & Friends,” Crocker
was given a lot of unenviable cards in his deck. Sure, his leading
lady, our titular Lulu, is enthusiastic and gets an absolute A for
effort. Her acting is a bit rough but she does try, with the
highlight including a crude and funny spectral encounter. Actually,
the women in the film all get an A for trying. One of her friends, a
very attractive, dark haired beauty valiantly tries to get her
boyfriend, whose bad haircut and horrible taste in underwear just
screams coke head late 80's scumbag, to rise to attention. But it's
no use. You really just want to reach through the screen and say,
“Honey, it's okay. Go shower up and get a nicer man. One whose
taste in bikini underwear won't make you instantly question where
you're headed in life.”

Bad decision making.

With “Bat Pussy,” the issue of male
virility rendered flaccid despite the near-heroic attempts by giving
women comes into play too. Unlike “Lulu & Friends,” where at
least some of the couplings actually result in some sort of fruition,
“Bat Pussy” is like one mobious strip of bickering and a man, the
only man in the whole bloody film, whose failure to achieve any sort
of usable erection starts to feel like it s an unintentional metaphor
for our failure to ever achieve true greatness in this life. Or maybe
he just had whiskey dick. You never know.

In lieu of a pretty brunette, we have
our hero's wife, a pale, bouffanted Shirley-type who vacillates
between trying to turn on her man and bitching at him. With lines
like, “You wouldn't know how to eat pussy if it was your dead
grandmother's” (!!!) and “You don't love me, motherfucker!,”
you can maybe understand why he is having a bit of a difficult time
getting aroused. In fairness to her, what woman wants to hear her
redneck amour droning on about how “we need to do this just like in
the magazine” and that ever sweet bon-mot, “Darling, she meant
nothing to me!”?

Probably a relative.

At least with “Lulu,” there's a
very loosely-restrained feeling of rompiness, rendered all the more
surreal by Crocker's absolutely brilliant use of music. Honestly, the
music saves a large portion of the sex scenes, which otherwise would
be bordering on the unwatchable. Everything from funk classics to
some incidental music most famous for being used on “The Little
Rascals” movie shorts, all pop up throughout the film, as if it is
an act of pure directorial alchemy.

That said, there is one mighty big
advantage that “Bat Pussy” has and that is all in the form of its
title character. Imagine Batman if he was a cornfed dame whose “lair”
was a cement dinge-room, complete with a hobbity-hop in lieu of a car
and the rattiest Superhero costume this side of “Rat Fink a Boo Boo.” If the words, instant awesome, came to mind then you would be
correct! Here's a character that neither Marvel or DC Comics would
want to touch with a 10-foot pole, which is their loss. Bat Pussy is
all sorts of foul-mouthed, bent-moral wonder and yet, sadly, not even
she can get a happy physical result from our hero. Her classy
reaction? “You don't know how to fuck, motherfucker!” I hope this
man got some good therapy afterwards, that is if he didn't end up
buried under a bridge in Anywhere, Southern USA.

The splendor of the Bat Pussy Headquarters.

At the end of the day, while both “Lulu & Friends” and “Bat Pussy” may fail in the arousal
department, they took, intentionally (“Lulu”) and unintentionally
(“Bat Pussy”) their individual weaknesses and transformed them
into a viewer experience that is as hilarious as it is harrowing and
even Artaudian in its regard for the audience. Plus, both are still
better than anything Julia Roberts has starred in. (Thank you, thank
you and please, tip your piano player!)

1 comment:

The image of the protagonist heading down the road on that hoppity-hop thing is actually fairly memorable. It's not immediately clear whether anything else in either film would be, but "Bat Pussy" apparently has at least that sequence going for it!